Documentary UK: a study of the feature documentary film industry

该项目旨在增加对英国当代长篇纪录片产业的了解和理解。它有三个核心目标：1)绘制行业地图并分析其运作；2)对行业的形成和影响其发展的因素进行历史记录；3)调查行业面临的批评和挑战，并探索如何解决这些问题。自1926年英国纪录片运动(1926-1946)的名义领袖约翰·格里尔森创造了纪录片这个词以来，纪录片一直是英国电影文化的重要组成部分。然而，由于有如此多的英国学者关注这一时期及其成就，随后的发展被边缘化了。这些发展之一是出现了由致力于制作用于广播或影院展览的故事片(70分钟或更长)的组织组成的故事片行业，这些纪录片与事实或专业纪录片截然不同-尽管往往与纪实电视制作有关。自21世纪初以来，故事片的受欢迎程度大幅上升，成为全球重要的票房吸引力。虽然这一点在2004年的《法伦海特9/11》和2006年的《难以忽视的真相》等美国电影中得到了最明显的证明，但英国的一系列纪录片都取得了巨大的成功(即使不一定是商业的，也是至关重要的)，包括《黑金》(2005)、《线的尽头》(2008)、《白手起家》(2010)、《冒烟升起》(2011)、奥斯卡提名的《杀戮演绎》(2012)和奥斯卡获奖影片《公民四》(2014)。因此，英国故事片行业现在是更广泛的电影和电视行业的一个既定部分，有专门用于金融、制作、发行和展览的不同细分部门。然而，尽管纪录片已经确立了地位，而且英国纪录片被广泛认为正在经历一个“黄金时代”(Sight&Sound，2014年9月，第52页)，但支撑它的产业结构却鲜有学术关注。因此，如果要理解、支持和维持英国纪录片产业目前在经济和文化上的成功，就有必要及时而紧迫地研究它。这个项目是与三个机构合作伙伴--英国电影学院(BFI)、创意英格兰和格里尔森--以及来自该行业每个主要部门(金融、制作、发行和展览)的五个合作伙伴共同开发的：BRITDOC基金会是英国纪录片融资和发行的领先经纪公司；达特茅斯电影公司是英国最有影响力的纪录片制作公司之一；Dogwoof是英国领先的纪录片发行商；谢菲尔德纪录片/Fest是英国最著名的纪录片电影节；Yaddo是英国第一个纪录片网络广播公司，由英国领先的广播平台BBC Storyville的前负责人于2016年推出。所有合作伙伴将通过一系列半结构化采访参与研究，而来自该行业子行业的合作伙伴也将参与一段参与者观察期。结合对一手和二手材料的案头分析(学术文献、行业媒体、对电影本身的仔细分析)，这种全面的方法将最好地实现三个核心目标。除了它将产生的一系列学术成果外，该项目还将对该行业产生许多切实的应用和好处。这些政策建议将为BFI和创意英格兰提供基于证据的、实际适用的建议。与DOC/FEST讲习班和项目网站一起，这些活动将促进学术界和产业界之间的知识交流，扩大了解，努力建设一个更可持续、更具创新性以及在文化和经济上取得成功的纪录片产业。

This project aims to increase knowledge and understanding of the contemporary feature-length documentary film industry in the UK. It has three core objectives: 1) to map the industry and analyse its operation; 2) to historicise the industry's formation and the factors that have shaped its development; and 3) to investigate the criticisms and challenges the industry faces and explore how these might be addressed. Documentary has formed a major part of British film culture ever since John Grierson, the figurehead of the British Documentary Movement (1926-46), coined the term in 1926. However, with so much British scholarship focusing on that period and its achievements, subsequent developments have been marginalised. One of those developments has been the emergence of a feature documentary industry comprised of organisations dedicated to the production of feature-length (70 minutes or more) films for broadcast or theatrical exhibition that is distinct from - albeit often related to - factual or specialist factual television production).Since the beginning of the 21st century, feature-length documentaries have experienced a major upsurge in popularity and become a significant global box-office attraction. Although this is most obviously evidenced by US films such as Farenheit 9/11 (2004) or An Inconvenient Truth (2006), a range of UK feature documentaries have enjoyed significant (critical if not necessarily commercial) success, including Black Gold (2005), The End of the Line (2008), Selfmade (2010), Up in Smoke (2011), the Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing (2012), and the Oscar-winning Citizen Four (2014). As a result, the UK feature documentary industry is now an established part of the broader film and television industries, with distinct subsectors dedicated to finance, production, distribution and exhibition. Yet despite its established presence, and the fact that UK documentary is widely acknowledged to be experiencing a 'golden age' (Sight & Sound, September 2014, p. 52), little scholarly attention has been paid to the industrial structures underpinning it. There is thus a timely and urgent need to study the UK documentary industry if its current economic and cultural success is to be understood, supported and sustained. This project has been developed in association with three institutional partners - the British Film Institute (BFI), Creative England and The Grierson - as well as five partners from each of the industry's main subsectors (finance, production, distribution and exhibition): The BRITDOC Foundation is the leading broker of documentary film finance and distribution in the UK; Dartmouth Films is one of the UK's most influential documentary production companies; Dogwoof is the UK's leading documentary distributor; Sheffield Doc/Fest is the preeminent documentary film festival in the UK; and Yaddo, the UK's first documentary webcaster, was launched in 2016 by the former head of BBC Storyville, the UK's leading broadcast platform.All partners will participate in the research via a series of semi-structured interviews, while the partners from the industry's subsectors will also take part in a period of Participant Observation. Combined with desk-based analyses of primary and secondary materials (academic literature, trade press, close analysis of the films themselves), this comprehensive methodology will best enable the three core objectives to be addressed.The project will have a number of tangible applications and benefits to the industry in addition to the range of academic outputs it will generate. The policy proposals will provide the BFI and Creative England with evidence-based, practically-applicable recommendations. Together with the Doc/Fest workshops and project website, these will facilitate knowledge exchange between academia and industry that will expand understanding and work towards a more sustainable, innovative and culturally and economically successful documentary industry.